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Cmpe undergrad here, I am really interested in getting some type of internship but I feel It will be difficult for me. I have a 2.7 GPA right now and am attending a good school. All the intern and university positions seem to at least require a 3.0 which sucks cause there are some great jobs I would love to try for. I've been trying to raise my GPA and am hoping over the next year and a half before I hopefully graduate I can get it to at least a 3.2. But is there any advice for someone in my situation? Am i screwed for internships and the like? What about after graduating is it gonna be a huge factor?
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Jan 3, 2011 01:39
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movax posted:That said, I think you need the MS/PhD for the real insane/halo jobs in EE. Being a guy at Intel or Nvidia with job titles like "ASIC Architect" or "Process Architect/Engineer/Scientist" and developing manufacturing processes for ICs, I imagine you have to be absolutely stunning in your field. Sorry to poke at an old post. But My friend just got hired as an ASIC Designer for Nvidia in the GPU department, pretty much a dream job. He still hasn't finished his Bachelors in Computer Engineering, so you don't even need a MS/PhD for these jobs; just gotta be smart as all hell and have a phenomenal gpa. I will say though that a lot of those hardware design and ASIC jobs do require 5+ years experience or a masters so it would help, but it's not impossible to get one right out of the gates with a BS.
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Nov 27, 2012 07:20
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So I could use some advice, I'm not sure this pertains directly to engineering but I'll post it here anyways. This is my first job out of college as a embedded firmware engineer. I started at my current company January of 2013 on a temporary 3 month contract with potential extension from a contract hiring firm. They liked me at the end of that time and extended my contract out for another year. I'm up for evaluation in May(ish) where they will finally decide if they want to offer me a permanent position (though it could just be another extension). I got a lot of positive feedback last summer and during the fall. I had my performance review in I believe November where I scored pretty well on everything (5/5 on quality of work, 3/5 on quantity. Though I was told this was a preferred position as quality > quantity). My only notable critique was how I used some of my vacation hours to round off 40 hour work weeks instead of using them in whole day chunks. Anyways so I'm at my department bosses birthday party this weekend and he pulls me aside. He tells me how our head of engineering boss, the guy who has the final say in hiring doesn't think I'm working hard enough. This came as a big surprise, I'm honestly at a loss. I got what I thought was a pretty good review from him personally, and my department boss really likes me and my work. He told me he specifically is advocating for them to offer me a permanent position. I have no idea what "not working hard enough" even means, because the head of engineering doesn't even really see what I'm working on day to day and my direct department boss has way more visibility and knowledge on my day to day and he tells me he likes me and my work and wants to keep me on. So this all comes as they have recently given me a pretty big project, I feel pretty confident in what I'll be doing and getting it done. But now my department boss tells me this is essentially a test, if I do well and bust my rear end for the next month or two I should be in the clear. But to be honest it's pretty demoralizing, I've had this whole "temp" thing hanging over my head for over a year and despite thinking I was in a solid posiiton and doing good work I get this dropped on me. I already was considering heading out of the city I'm in even if they offered me a position and this is just adding to that desire. I guess my questions is, is this a normal response? Are they just looking for an excuse to not hire me? Is it common for employers to say that? I've never been told I wasn't working hard enough at any job, I've always felt like I was pretty motivated. I'll admit I've had down days or times where there just wasn't much critical work to be done, but when someone asks me to do something specifically I jump all over it. I search out work myself when I run out of things to do. I'm more upset that they didn't give me a heads up that they weren't satisfied I was under the impression I was doing well. If my department boss wouldn't have stuck his neck out for me and let me know I wouldn't even of had a clue.
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Feb 10, 2014 05:08
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Noctone posted:How many hours a week do you typically work? It's a really sad reality of the engineering world, but if you aren't working more than 50 middle management types are pretty much going to write you off as a slacker. I work 40, haven't really done much over that. I think you're hitting on something there. A lot of the other younger engineers that they have kept on tend to spend a lot of extra time in the office, even on weekends. I have no problem putting in extra time, but to be honest I haven't felt the need too. I get my work done in a timely fashion and when we have slower weeks there really isn't much point in me putting in more time. I noticed our head of engineering specifically looks at my hours time sheets so I'm guessing this is him seeing me only putting in 40 hours and thinking I'm not motivated. That's a bit depressing because I love engineering and I like what I do, I think i'm pretty good at it. But working extra time just for the sake of working extra is detrimental to my quality and work enjoyment. When I leave work I check out, I try not to think about it so that I can come back refocused. It's my time to be more than just an engineer/computer guy. If I have something pressing that needs to be done at work, like I said I'll work the extra time. But since I've started our department (it's really only 3-4 of us at any given time) we have been clearing outstanding issues and keeping up with customer support tickets. Which brings me to another gripe about the company, they hire a crap ton of "associates" which are essentially just college coops/interns who work for 9 months. Our company is about ~150 people, of that number ~50-80 are interns who are often cycling in and out. I think it breeds a degree of competitiveness, but it's like the company is in a constant state of training new people. My boss spends a huge chunk of his day fielding questions from other people, he comes in on weekends just to have alone time to get work done. SeaBass posted:It sounds like the typical "sink or swim" corporate culture, and being a temp just makes it worse because they have nothing invested in you. Yeah I've already started looking around, luckily firmware engineers are in pretty high demand so I'm not too worried about landing a job. The company I'm at now is based in a small city with a big and pretty highly ranked university. They benefit from a huge workforce of smart students. This gives them a lot of internal competitiveness which as I stated above I think hurts the company in the long run. Since I've started there I haven't really felt like I've been apart of the company. I've always felt like I'm just a temporary holdover who could be replaced on a year by year basis. Popete fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Feb 10, 2014 |
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Feb 10, 2014 06:06
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resident posted:I'd say my views align the same way and it hasn't limited my success 5 years into my career. Actually the total opposite, I consider myself to be a lot more social or at least better at handling social interactions than a lot of other computer engineers/programmers. During my performance interview I received a 5/5 on inter-personal communications, I think I have a pretty good grasp on speaking enough/not too much. I ended up going out for some beers with my boss last night, we discussed the situation a little more and I'm feeling better about it. I thought about what you guys had said here and I asked him if it meant I was expected to just work more hours. He said that the head of engineering was concerned that when we come down to crunch time on big projects and poo poo just needs to get done that he thinks I won't want to put in the time and stay late or work weekends. This really hasn't been an issue yet which is why I've only been working 40 hours. Like I said I'm fine coming in to get poo poo done and will even enjoy it to a degree, I like engineering I like solving problems. The thing is though I feel like I'm pretty decent and efficient at my job and I've been keeping up with my workload. This new big project (aka my test) will be a lot more responsibility and I have no problem working extra time to get it done. I've already decided I'm just gonna start working 5 hours extra for the next few weeks until the final hiring decision is made. My boss suggested I just try putting in some more hours (like 45 a week) even if I'm not doing that much (he agreed it was kind of bogus cause sometimes you'll just be twiddling your thumbs or feel inefficient working to many hours). Coming from laid back smaller employer jobs, corporate culture can be weird sometimes. Popete fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Feb 12, 2014 |
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Feb 12, 2014 05:03
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Take Operating Systems, it was an incredibly practical and insightful class for me. Of course going into OS development after college even more so for me, but it's very helpful to have a basic understanding of the hardware/software interface on a larger scale. Other than that, depends what your focus is. If you have a chance take a bunch of HDL classes (Verilog) as they are a lot of fun and challenging. My favourite course in college was a VLSI design/theory class (think transistor CAD layout).
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Feb 28, 2014 07:05
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Is it bad form to put "No software or design verification/testing job inquiry's" on my LinkedIn or Dice page? I'm tired of getting emails for software/design testing jobs, I have no interest in them and there are like a million of them.
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May 1, 2014 18:42
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Steve Jorbs posted:Do you think that's even going to stop them? Good point
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May 1, 2014 19:41
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Or go CmpE and never have to worry about getting certified in anything 
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May 2, 2014 16:16
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Apparently most recruiters don't know the difference either. See my above post on being bombarded with test position jobs.
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May 5, 2014 21:53
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Skeleton Jelly posted:It seems to me that the definition of what constitutes an engineer is becoming exponentially more abstract; just noticed my local schools are offering degrees in "Media Engineering" and that seems like the weirdest poo poo. It's being used more in the traditional sense or similiar to an "audio engineer". An engineer used to be more akin to what we now a days call a technician or skilled trade person.
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May 14, 2014 18:21
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Looking for some job advice/comfort. Recently rejected a contract extension working as an embedded systems engineer (RTOS stuff mostly VxWorks and firmware drivers) for a company I joined up with right out of college. I was working there for about a 1.5 years up until May. I didn't accept the 1 year contract extension as I knew I was moving to the Chicago area in September and was looking forward to a little time off over the summer. Well I'm applying for jobs all over the metro area but so many seems to require 3+ years experience. Did I put myself in a hole by leaving my job early? I'm afraid I'll be stuck looking for entry level positions or having to looking outside the firmware/embedded systems/OS realm which I really enjoy.
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Jul 17, 2014 02:24
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Not sure if this is the right thread but I'll ask anyway. I'm considering going back to grad school. I graduated almost 2 years ago with a degree in Computer Engineering from UW Madison. I currently work in embedded systems as a software engineer. I wouldn't go back unless I could get into the program I really want which is VLSI design/Cumputer Architecture or a program focused on HDL design. Issue is I was a very average to sub average student. Think I was around a 2.8 gpa after transferring from community college and only taking engineering courses (mostly) at Madison. Is it at all feasible to get into a program like that if I had a great GRE score? I'm not sure how competitive those programs are but I loved VLSI design in undergrad and it's my dream job to get into. On a side note, what do other embedded dudes call themselves? My previous job I was an Embedded Engineer my current job (competing company) is Software Engineer. But as mentioned above I feel like software engineer is the new term for programmer. I do embedded C and assembly as well as a lot of hardware debugging through software and some soldering debug modifications for myself. Popete fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Oct 8, 2014 |
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Oct 8, 2014 02:39
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BumbleChump posted:Thanks for the replies everyone. Was in the same boat coming out of college 2 years ago. Luckily I had some intern experience thanks to an awesome TA I had in my embedded electronics class, he hooked me up with a small engineering company he worked at. Definitely try to get internships, they give you a major leg up and valuable experience. I worked at a small ~10 people contract engineering firm with only 1 electrical and 1 software engineer and then me doing a mix of both. It was awesome and I got to take on some cool projects mostly by myself because of how small we where. I cannot stress enough what it means to make connections with teacher and TAs they can give you invaluable recommendations if you just show some enthusiasm and are not cripplingly anti social. I just moved cities this summer and subsequently found myself job searching with only 1.5 years work experience post gradution I was very nervous I was going to be railroaded with limited experience and a low GPA. I only had 1 place ask me about my college GPA, after a preliminery interview in which they expressed a lot of interest in doing an in person interview. They called me back the next day to follow up as they forgot to ask about my GPA. I told them and I never heard back (hah). Oh well, I see it as there loss if they want to still hold fast to GPA cutoffs. I landed at a job at an amazing company with some really cool people and I'm not even concerned with my college grades at this point going forward. Just land that first job after school and you'll be set. Work a few years and no one will give 2 shits because it really doesn't matter. Unless of course you are going to grad school but that can be managed.
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Oct 26, 2014 20:53
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Could go with a classic version control setup live SVN/Mercurial/Git.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:19
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So I've been at my new job for almost 3 months now. Things seem to be going well and I really like everyone so far, the work is interesting too. Im interested in asking my boss for an informal review just to see if things are going well from his end. How should I approach this? Just shoot him an email asking if he sees any issues with how things have gone so far? Is it too early to ask? I know its not a lot of time but I've been quite active since starting.
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Nov 20, 2014 18:05
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:I'll take the FE just because I already have the prep material and reference book from my girlfriend, but I don't expect I'll ever attempt the PE. I can't imagine it'll make much of a difference for a CS/CpE, but why not if I already have the material and it's not much extra to prepare for? I'm a CMPE, I've never heard anyone even talk about the FE/PE in this field. The only reason I know about it is from my brother in law who is a higher up Civil Engineer. Unless you really like taking tests I don't think you'll get much out of the FE besides a piece of paper.
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Dec 1, 2014 02:11
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Edit:nah
Popete fucked around with this message at 05:57 on May 30, 2016 |
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May 30, 2016 01:30
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If you have an actual engineering degree from a school of engineering that's good enough for me. I do think the word is muddled and a lot of the tech world has taken the word and applied it to just about anything from IT to web scripting. I may be a a bit of a snob about that, but I'm not gonna call anyone out on it. My girlfriends brother in law works in IT and does not have a formal engineering background but calls himself an engineer, I find it slightly annoying but I'm not gonna say anything about it. Saying you need a PE to be called an engineering is just silly, most engineering professions make no use of a PE unless you're in construction.
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Jan 3, 2020 18:08
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Do you have experience writing software? What area of embedded are you interested in? Hardware design, software, FPGAs?
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Jan 4, 2023 17:34
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I work on software in embedded and I don't know of anyone with a EIT/PE, that kinda thing really only seems relevant to civil engineers and the like.
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Jan 4, 2023 23:14
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Spambort posted:thanks for the advice i'll cancel the eit and look into some projects to work on I work for a small company but you usually pick an area and that is your focus. By that I mean if you wanna do hardware you're usually an EE and you're going to be doing schematics and PCB layout along with board bring up. If you wanna do software you're going to be a full-time embedded software developer and that is still mostly C/C++ although Python and other scripting languages are useful to know, don't get hung up on learning a bunch of languages you need to learn how the software and hardware interact at the lowest levels. If you wanna do FPGA Verilog/VHDL than you're probably going to be an FPGA dev full time. Of course in embedded all 3 of these areas are highly intertwined so if you're a hardware engineer you will likely still be doing some C/python software to help test your design during board bring up. If you're an FPGA dev you will likely be working closely with the hardware and software teams during design and development phases. It could be your resume is a bit too scattershot if you're applying for hardware/fpga/software positions using the same resume. You might want to focus your search in a specific area you're interested in and tailor your resume to reflect that. If you honestly don't know what area you'd like to focus on then keep playing around with dev kits, get an FPGA kit to practice writing Verilog, download EAGLE PCB software and create your own hardware. Also learn how to use common debugging tools like oscilloscopes, JTAG debuggers, logic analyzers, employers want to see that you know how to dig into problems and debug them on your own.
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Jan 5, 2023 04:16
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It wouldn't hurt but depending on your discipline it may not net you really any benefit for a good amount of effort and some money. I work in embedded software engineering and I can't think of anyone in my field who has a PE.
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Feb 15, 2023 17:54
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Looking for some advice on career advancement. So I've been out of college for 10 years now, been working at my current company for ~8.5 and I'm liking it. It's a small engineering team working primarily in the aerospace field, we develop custom hardware/software for larger aircraft companies and I work as a software engineer in the embedded systems world. A few years ago my boss (head of software engineering) retired and he asked if I had any interest in taking over his position. At the time I declined because I definitely wasn't ready to take over all his responsibilities especially in regards to documentation and knowing certain FAA standards so another guy took over but he is probably not too far off from retiring himself. Today I talked with our company president and I told him that when my current boss retired (ballpark 5-8 years from now) I would be interested in taking over as head of software engineering and he was very supportive of the idea saying they'd love for me to take over and said that if I wanted to take any classes or attend conferences they would help pay for it. The current software team consists of 6 engineers, I am the 2nd youngest and all the others are 50+ and nearing retirement so the structure of the engineering team in the next decade could look completely different. My background is an undergrad in Computer Engineering I had pretty meh grades (I think like a 2.8 GPA) from a good state school, I have never seriously considered going back to school but now it's a real possibility. I don't know what for exactly but I see my old university has an "Engineering Management MS" program. Anyone currently in project management (particularly software) that could weigh in? Given my not so stellar undergrad grades could I even get into a MS program? Are there other options besides a graduate degree that people might recommend? Popete fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Mar 1, 2023 |
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Mar 1, 2023 00:32
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Crazyweasel posted:IMO this could be a bit more than just “take some classes” but I’d have to know more. I’m a Program Manager for Software, having come up through Aerospace and now in Tech and have an MBA. I just haven’t been a people-manager but worked closely with a lot. So this would be more akin to a tech lead, I would still be doing some engineering work but probably not more than 50% of the time. That's part of the appeal to me, I don't want to go full on PM/manager and give up the technical side of things. The software team I would be overseeing fluctuates between 4-8 people as we make use of contractors fairly regularly (usually the same ones so there is a relationship there) with I would say 4 core software engineers permanently here. As I mentioned right now most everyone else is older it's been an issue at my company for awhile now that we need to be getting younger and that could be a part of my job is finding younger engineers, I've already been involved in interviewing and hiring decisions so that's not totally new to me. Motivation/people managing at my work is kind of unique in that everyone here gets along really well and have been working on and off with each other since the 90s for the most part, my job leading the software team is mostly because the other software guys don't want to do that they just want to do engineering work and would be more than happy for me to take over the customer relations schedule/documentation management stuff. I like to think (at least for an engineer) I have good people skills, that was actually one of the things my company president said when I brought up the idea and he thought I would be a good fit. Software design and proposals would be a big part of my job, we are a contract engineering company meaning we don't really have our own products we win projects from larger companies based on our designs. I would be getting a lot of help from the other software engineers in coming up with designs but documentation would become a bigger part of my job. I would be working closely with our EE side to help recommend parts based on software requirements from our customers. Popete fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Mar 1, 2023 |
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Mar 1, 2023 18:00
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What are you wanting to learn programming for? What area of EE do you think you're interested in? I would say if you're going to be an EE and want to work in something like embedded systems it would be handy to know Python/Bash to be able to write your own basic test scripts. For example writing a script that reads and dumps a bunch of registers from a device across an I2C bus.
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Apr 4, 2023 01:36
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The only reason I hesitate to suggest C is that it involves learning a lot more than just the language, like you have to figure out how to compile programs and cross compilation if you're not developing stuff for your host. It's definitely a great language to learn but if you're not expecting to do programming as a main part of your job/classes then I would stick to something that's going to be easier to work with as a beginner.
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Apr 4, 2023 20:18
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idk the market for ME's as I am not one but if he has been working in QA testing and not design that might limit him, especially if he's been doing that his entire career. I wouldn't think he has to limit himself to only medical device companies, I would assume QA skills would be transferable to other products/markets.
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Jan 23, 2024 22:59
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Sounds like he should think about a career shift if he's this unmotivated to look for another position or educate himself in his field. Perhaps entirely outside of engineering.
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Jan 24, 2024 17:37
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Yeah but this guy has a family and he hasn't been working for almost 2 years, sounds like it's past just a "I'll take a few months off between jobs".
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Jan 24, 2024 19:52
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I befriended a TA of mine in college for an Embedded Software class (Computer Engineering major) and he hooked me up with an internship at a place he was working at part time well finishing his masters. Despite not wanting to do software initially I really enjoyed embedded software work and have been doing it ever since.
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Mar 8, 2024 22:44
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I can't imagine you'd find much fulfillment in the petrochemical industry so that all makes sense. I would look in a different industry like others have said, unless you really can't stand doing engineering work at all.
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Apr 14, 2024 23:11
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One the most impactful things as a student was an engineer who was a mentor to me and I really look up to who said "If they'd pay me the same amount of money to scrub toilets I'd do it". His point being his job is there to facilitate the rest of his life and his hobbies. You can still enjoy your job without making it your sole identity. At the time I kinda was shocked by him saying that, I was in college (he was my TA and also got me an internship) and was so focused on engineering. Now I'm in my 30's, I like my work it's enjoyable (for the most part) and there is fulfillment in the challenges it brings. That said I have hobbies outside my work which have nothing to do with engineering and part of why I've stayed with the same company for so long is I don't work long hours and the schedule is flexible I can make it work around my hobbies.
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Apr 16, 2024 18:39
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I worked for a company that was a partner with Intel meaning we got new architecture chips to develop with before they were commercially available but they were still technically owned by Intel. I had to install a heat sink onto my chip but I ended up over tightening the screws and it caused the package to crack. I believe they sent out a memo shortly afterwards telling software people to ask for help installing any modifications to their boards. oops
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May 1, 2024 20:40
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